Note for non-Australian visitors

In Australia "Liberal" is Right-Wing Neo-Cons; economically liberal, socially repressive, tax the poor to subsidise the rich. Republican is also a good thing, as opposed to being a lackey of the British monarchy.

Archive for ‘#theirABC’

As a frequent user of Twitter, I see a lot of tweets directed to Craig Emerson, (possibly the most prolific Federal Labor tweeeter) asking for all sorts of things. People think, if they tweet Emmo, he can solve all their problems. Unless he is your local member, there is very little he can do.

A frequent request of Craig Emerson is that he sort of the bias of the ABC. Because everyone knows, if you tweet random politicians, they will act on it.

On 5 June, I took the time to write letters to my senators and the Communications minister. So far, I have had 3 responses, one was to provide me the details of my local MP, a very far right Liberal, the other two were the same letter. Which is only fair, since I sent exactly the same letter to all senators.

This is the response – the Communications minister has no problems with the ABC, sees no bias, and will NOT do anything about it. So perhaps if we on the Left have a problem with the Right wing electioneering from the ABC, we need to get a bit more active than “tweeting Emmo”.

ABC’s Lateline has a guest tweeter feature, where certain right wing politicians and News Limited journalists Live Tweet lateline. It is so successful for them, they have even had guests with locked twitter accounts – meaning the only people who could see the tweets were those who were actually following him.

Last nights guest was News Limited’s Miranda Devine.

A Kevin Rudd parody twitter account tweetedKevin Rudd ‏@_KRuddMP
@mirandadevine You only got ‪#lateline‬ tonight because I have better things to do. Like looking in a mirror looking glum. ‪#auspol‬ _KRudd

Lateline (or perhaps a parody of Lateline) responded

Lateline ‏@Lateline
@_KRuddMP Lateline would welcome you as guest tweeter any night that’s convenient for you.

So I asked the question

Turn Left ‏@turnleft2013
Im sure @ Lateline realise theyve just offered guest tweeter to a parody acct of One K Rudd, yep, says it all really

the gap between the @ and the Lateline was deliberate. The tweet was about them, not to them. To which Lateline responded

Lateline ‏@Lateline
@turnleft2013 We’ll of course be checking in with k Rudd’s office before going ahead.

Maybe Lateline has become a parody of itself, meanwhile the fake politicians make more sense than the ‘news’.

For many viewers, Mark Scott, (who is a former NSW Greiner Liberal Party Government as chief of staff to the Education Minister, Virginia Chadwick and former senior adviser to education minister, Terry Metherell) has presided over one of the most dramatic shifts on editorial policy this country has ever witnessed.

Under Scott’s leadership ABC went from a trusted news organisation that was balanced, fair and impartial, to a Liberal-National Party PR machine.

This is the opinion of Annabel Crabb, described in wikipedia as “ABC’s chief online political writer”. Yep, agree, turning the ABC into the media arm of the conservative political parties – classy.

Australia is a democracy in name only. Sure, we get to vote every few years. But the majority of the population are so brainwashed by the one-party propaganda of the mainstream media (on behalf of assorted billionaires) that they do as required in any case.

There is a lot to be said for teaching civics, history and economics in the school system. At least if people know the basics of what makes a society ‘tick’ they’re less likely to be duped by those with anti-social agendas.

An independent non-political public service broadcaster would be an invaluable asset to democracy, too, as a bulwark against the bias and agenda of the for-profit media. We used to have such in Australia, but the rodent Howard poisoned it from the top down, and the toxin is now expressed across its news and current affairs output.

The ABC may be the most baised public broadcaster in the world. I have certainly not encountered anything like it.

With one of the most concentrated media ownership regimes in the world under Murdoch, to then lose the independence of the public broadcaster defies description as an assault on democracy.

It can be difficult to tell nowadays, but the fact is, journalists are covered by codes of ethics.

For example, there is the code of the International Federation of Journalists. It’s proclaimed as an “international … standard of professional conduct for journalists engaged in gathering, transmitting, disseminating and commenting on news and information in describing events.”

So, what is “Truth”? Journalists, to whom words are tools of the trade, would be advised to frequently ponder on the meaning of this critical word, and to always apply it to their own efforts.

In the context of reporting Australian politics, it is important to remember that “Truth” involves several aspects:

Tell both/all sides of the story

Subject both/all sides to scrutiny

Skewing coverage to favour one side or the other is fundamentally unTruthful

Do not conceal/whitewash details which may be inconvenient for any player/party

With these criteria in mind, biased reporting is not and can never be acceptable. Yet it is has become virtually the norm of the mainstream media in this country!

It is of increasing concern that Abbott and the Coalition receive a “free pass” from the media.

Fortunately, there does exist a small number of journalists/writers who are speaking about the free pass given to Abbott.

Andrew Elder, Politically Homeless blog, 01 February 2012:

Abbott has achieved what generations of politicians have only dreamed of: the media take him at his word. His speeches are reported verbatim and accorded a merit they do not deserve. Where his words differ from those of others (particularly the Prime Minister and members of the incumbent government), he is assumed to be right and they wrong. This veneration of Abbott by the press gallery (always “Mr Abbott” from the press gallery; he is rarely addressed as “Tony” while the Prime Minister is addressed regularly as “Julia”) is unprecedented in a democracySource: The National Pikers’ Club

… [Abbott has] been aided and abetted by journalists who’ve continued to report unchallenged claims that appear to contradict facts.Source: Carbon price won’t stop the spin

Alister Drysdale, Business Spectator, 19 September 2011

… [Abbott] sits comfortably in his Opposition Leader’s chair, basking in constant and light-as-puff media attention and scrutinySource: Is Abbott a one sound-bite wonder?

While the media may be remiss in their duty to the public, we bloggers will take up the slack. We will scrutinise Abbott and the Coalition, even if the mainstream are reluctant or fearful to do so. We will scrutinise the mainstream media’s coverage of politics, and hold the media to account.

We will watch the journalists, and hold them to account when they fall down on the job of Truthfully informing the public.

The ABC hasn’t been biased towards the ABC since Ben Chifley drove trains, yet the myth persists, it serves the regime-change agenda well. If viewers believe that the ABC has ALP bias, they may just believe that non-stop Reith, Sloan, Michin, IPA, “Tony Abbott says” and “the Opposition says” is just for balance.

Airhart? AIRhart? for a pilot? ‘Divers will start looking for Airhart’s plane next month.‘ Oh hahaha. Tell me that was a typo and not bad humour.

Amelia Earhart, USAmerican pilot, awarded, record-setting, pioneering, role model for trail blazing feminists. Many people would have heard of Earhart at some point, maybe not the young kiddies born from the 80s onwards, who have no appreciation of history.

However, that is no excuse. Even if the person who wrote this is iGen, surely they know how to use The Google.

So, if the name Amelia Earhart was unfamiliar to the person who wrote, edited, sub-edited, formatted, or copy/pasted this story to the ABC news website, they must at least know she was a person and not a drug (the link calls her “national heroin”).

Maybe it’s time to outsource ABC website duties to New Zealand, Fairfax are already headed over there. Unless… unless ABC was already in New Zealand, how would we know?

Yes, Disco Diva, Donna Summer passed away. Yes, her song ‘Love To Love You Baby‘ is famous for its 20-or-so orgasmic sounding moans. But her influence on Australian culture is minimal at best.

So this picture is just another nail in the coffin of what was once an important institution in Australian news, as it degenerates further and further into total irrelevance.

Is this why the ABC can no longer carry any press conference with the Prime Minister without cutting away for a very important message from their sponsor (which given the amount of unquestioned airtime they have received recently, apparently their sponsor is the Liberal-Nationals), or technical difficulties? All the work experience kiddies are too busy scraping images of disco queens off Google-image search.

Is this what the ABC is reduced to when it no longer has Tony Abbott says as their default lead news story?

How many more examples of just how irrelevant ABC is can be squeezed into one picture?
1. Pintrest
2. Facebook like button
3. Donna Summer in pictures – not words
4. ABC news logo
5. a full story on ABC news website

ABC hasn’t just jumped the shark, it has pulled on the gold lamé hot pants, rainbow glitter halter top, the platform shoes and done the hustle, as it is cha-cha’s right out the building of Quality News.

added by 99.
image of the ABC pintrest page used without permission, but should come under the critique section of the fairuse of copyright
this post is not endorsed by anyone mentioned here

Is it no surprise that Latika Bourkes’ nickname is LIBtika. Harsh or not depends on your perspective.

Imagine the dynamics within caucus if Julia Gillard hasn’t flushed out Kevin Rudd in March (and then carpet bombed him c/o Roxon+Swan et al)

And there we have it, ABC’s raison d’être, it is all about the dynamics, carpet-bombing, fireworks – the media is pushing leadership challenges because it gives lazy political journalists something to do. Speculation and opinion have replaced research and facts.

At least, it wasn’t Tony Abbott says

They rewrite history, and there is no one to stop them. Apparently Stalin was pretty good at rewriting history, to remove enemies or add himself. Maybe that is what critics mean by ABC has a left-wing bias, the Stalinisation of the news.

Did I just hear ABC news refer to @PeterSlipperMP as a ‘Labor MP’?

Did they? Who knows, probably, that kind of fact-checking is beyond the reach of most ABC reporters these days.
By the way, ABC, Slipper is NOT a Labor MP, no matter how hard you hope and wish it to be so.

These people are playing games with our future – because when you have a 24-hour news cycle something has to fill the airwaves.

When they don’t have actual news to report, or rumours to speculate on, or opinions to bore us to death with, they just simple sit around talking to each other.

There you have it, ABC, you are not groovy. A sentiment that many former ABC viewers would whole-heartedly agree with.

But have no fear, all that left-wing bias is more than balanced by the Murdoch media.

The Daily Telegraph’s an unapologetic liar that creates ‘news’ yet we allow it to try manipulate regime change by publication? #auspol

Murdoch, and his near saturation levels of ownership, does not seem to affect politics any, because if there is one that Murdoch media is, it’s fair and balance. You will only get truth, justice and the American way if you read one his publications.

All this surveying people about trusting leaders, how about asking about trusting media commentary, so-called analysis & “reporting”

Many people don’t know their local politicians any more, so they only way they know them or their parties is through the media. When all the media in this country is pushing a Liberal-party, Election-now, Abbott-for-PM agenda, it is presenting a distorted view of reality. Of course, right-wing voters are happy with that distortion, it reflects their biases, makes them feel comfortable that they are right, but it is not a healthy democracy.

It seems there is a strange disease infecting political journalists all across the country. From the ABC and Murdoch media (but, I repeat myself), to reporters and newsreaders and journalists everywhere.

It is spreading at an alarming rate, Latika Bourke says it with increasing frequently:

… and various mutations have been noticed.
There is the Misha Schubert variant: Tony Abbott told us

ABCs Chief Political Correspondent Sabra Lane, with her own The Opposition Says defends this practice, other wise the Opposition would have so much trouble getting their message out to the public.
I know Sabra, it must be so difficult being Opposition Leader in a country with almost the entire media hostile to the Opposition… oh wait… it is the actual Government the media are hostile towards. With one media division – Murdoch – actually on record of wanting to destroy the Greens, the governemnts partner.

Without your questions and parroting what the Opposition says, Sabra, without your diligence, Sabra, the Opposition would get, as Sabra Lane says no coverage.

How about examining why Tony Abbott says what he says? Maybe… and I am going out on a limb here, but why not get a contrasting opinion from the government – I know, controversial suggestion! talking to the Government. Instead we have political reporters across the country, who are just taking at face value, that what Tony Abbott says is, as Tony Abbott says gospel truth.

I think it’s well past time for the ABC news department to start buying Thesauruses.